A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Anthony Asquith

Writers:

Anthony Asquith (scenario)
Herbert Price (story)

Release Date:

11 April 1930 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot:

Flashback story of an escape from the lonely, high-security Dartmoor Prison. A jealous barber's assistant...

Plot Keywords:

Dartmoor | Film In Film | Pathological Jealousy | Eerie | Stock Footage

Cast

Norah Baring	...	Sally, a manicurist
Uno Henning	...	Joe, a barber's assistant
Hans Adalbert Schlettow	...	Harry, a Dartmoor farmer (as Hans Schlettow)

Also Known As:

Escape from Dartmoor (USA)
Fången 53 (Sweden)

Country:

Sweden | UK

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (theatre scene) (soundtrack lost) | Silent

Certification:

Sweden:15 | UK:A

Company:

British Instructional Films (BIF)

Movie Connections:

Featured in Shepperton Babylon (2005) (TV)

Grand Cottage, moor please!

COTTAGE ON DARTMOOR: an expressionistic and claustrophobic account of sexual obsession and jealousy, very Hitchockian in the way it deals with the resulting crescendo of suspense, especially in connection with a key throat-cutting in a barber's chair incident. Asquith was a director who grew stodgy as his career entered into the sound era, viz his terribly British adaptions of Rattigan, but the present film (1929) is rather an eye opener. One standout scene is set within a cinema, partly a comment on the imminent and creatively burdensome coming of clunky sound, and which contains an extended eye opening use of editing, cutting about within an audience as the beady-eyed boy friend watches his victims - a bravura sequence which ought to be much better known to cineastes.